Program Notes

Guest speakers: Scott Olsen, The Lakey Family

From: ‘The Mysteries of the Amazon’ exhibit at the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, FL

Date this lecture was recorded: January 14, 2018

On this, the very first episode of ‘Find the Others’, The Lakey Sisters head to Florida. And so we are happy to welcome the Psychedelic Salon’s newest anchors, Alexa and Kat, as they prepare to part ways for the next chapter of their adventures.

This episode was recorded just before Kat traveled back to the Peruvian Amazon, where she is currently studying to be an ayahuasquera. She will be recording her portion of ‘Find the Others’ from there. While Kat worked her way across the globe, Alexa journeyed back to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she’ll be recording her part of the podcast.

In this episode, they interview Dr. Scott Olsen - author of the international best seller, ‘The Golden Section: Nature’s Greatest Secret’ and owner of one of the largest collections of Amazonian visionary art in North America.

The sisters visit with Scott on the last day of ‘The Mysteries of the Amazon’ exhibit at the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, FL, featuring the work of Pablo Amaringo and his students from the Usko-Ayar School of Visionary Painting. They talk with him about ayahuasca culture learn more about the paintings in his collection.

Following that, they be talk with their parents about their psychedelic experiences and how psilocybin can work as a therapeutic agent.

Email the Lakey Sisters: FindTheOthers42 (at) gmail (dot) com

 Links:
Find the Others Website

Intro music provided by Dashmesh

‘The Golden Section’ by Scott Olsen on Amazon

‘Wide Awake & Dreaming’ by The Lakey Sisters

The Lakey Sisters on YouTube
Mysteries of the Amazon Exhibit Photos
(photos by Matt Pallamary)

Previous Episode

565 - John Perry Barlow Tribute

Next Episode

566 - A Tribe of Selves

Similar Episodes

Transcript

00:00:00

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:19

This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:00:24

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:00:30

And it’s good to get back with our Podcast in a Podcast, Salon 2 series.

00:00:38

But first of all, I have to admit to being seriously remiss in not bringing you up to speed on the adventures of Lex Pelger,

00:00:41

who brought us the first 35 Salon 2 podcasts.

00:00:45

Although I’ve made brief mentions of his current whereabouts,

00:00:50

I should have made a bigger deal about it. However, well, I felt that first of all,

00:00:56

the details of Lex’s life should be made here in a Salon 2 podcast, which hasn’t happened for a couple months. And secondly, it seemed to me that Lex would be the best person to bring us up to

00:01:01

date himself. And I’m sure that he’ll be doing that very soon.

00:01:06

But here are the headlines about Lex. The big news is that he’s now the father of a baby girl.

00:01:12

Next comes the news that Lex has a regular job, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering the

00:01:18

fact that he now has more people to take care of than just himself. One other thing is that Lex is doing a podcast for

00:01:25

the cannabis company that he’s working for, and those and other stories I’m sure Lex will be

00:01:31

telling us himself in the weeks ahead when he returns to Salon 2 with more podcasts.

00:01:36

But today our host is Alexa, not to be confused with Lex, and she’ll be joined by her sister Kat.

00:01:43

In the weeks ahead, we’re going to

00:01:45

be hearing more podcasts that the Lakey sisters are now developing, and for their first podcast,

00:01:51

which we’re about to listen to, they’ve included two topics. First, we’ll hear them speaking with

00:01:56

my old friend Scott Olson on the final day of what was the largest exhibit of Amazonian art yet to be

00:02:03

held in the United States.

00:02:10

Scott and I, well, we’ve had some exciting adventures together in the past,

00:02:13

and so it was wonderful that he is now featured here in the salon.

00:02:16

I should have interviewed him myself a long time ago,

00:02:22

which, well, that’s why it’s so good to get some younger people like the Lakey sisters and Lex Pelger finding interesting people to interview when I fall down on the job.

00:02:26

The second part of today’s podcast is, I believe, unique in the annals of psychedelic podcasting.

00:02:34

Alexa and Kat interviewed their parents about impressions they had when the family had a

00:02:39

psychedelic experience together. Now, I’ve been fortunate to have had psychedelic experiences with my own children,

00:02:46

but what I wouldn’t give to be able to have done so with my dad and mother before they died.

00:02:51

What a gift to be able to not only be completely free to talk with one’s parents about psychedelics,

00:02:58

but on top of that, to be able to experience these important substances together.

00:03:02

I hope that you have that opportunity yourself

00:03:05

one day. So now, sit back and join me as we listen to Alexa and Kat, the Lakey Sisters.

00:03:14

From the California redwoods to the Peruvian Amazon, two sisters explore psychedelic culture,

00:03:21

its history, and its future. Welcome to Find the Others.

00:03:33

Greetings, and welcome to Find the Others, the newest podcast on the Psychedelic Salon.

00:03:37

I’m your host, Alexa. I’m an artist, writer, and an entheogen enthusiast.

00:03:42

And my name is Kat. I’m the co-host.

00:03:44

I’m a part-time video editor, and I’m currently in training to be an ayahuasquera. I’m heading to Peru later this week, and I’ll be broadcasting from the Sacred Valley and from the heart of the Amazon rainforest.

00:04:03

Kat and I are sisters. I’m the older one, for what it’s worth.

00:04:08

And we’re each going to collect interviews and stories from our journeys and encounters with fellow psychonauts.

00:04:12

From microdosing in Silicon Valley and the roots of the electric Kool-Aid acid test.

00:04:15

To speaking with indigenous tribes in the Amazon.

00:04:17

But first, Florida.

00:04:22

We’ve been in central Florida for the past week, visiting our folks and our grandfolks.

00:04:30

So before I go home to California and Kat goes back to Peru, we’re together for one more day. In this episode, we’ll be talking with Dr. Scott Olson.

00:04:36

He’s a curator and owner of the most comprehensive visionary art collection from the Peruvian Amazon.

00:04:41

Scott first received international acclaim by successfully decoding the geometric mysteries of Plato. His book, The Golden Section, Nature’s Greatest Secret,

00:04:45

is an international bestseller.

00:04:47

He graciously gave us a tour of some 95 paintings

00:04:50

at the Appleton Museum of Art.

00:04:52

It was the last day of the Mysteries of the Amazon exhibit,

00:04:55

which showcased the work of Pablo Amaringo and his students.

00:04:59

We’ll also be talking with our parents!

00:05:02

Wait, wait, wait, don’t go just yet!

00:05:03

They’re fellow psychonauts

00:05:05

and artists, and we’re going to discuss some of their most interesting psychedelic experiences

00:05:09

from an older generation’s perspective. This podcast is meant to give you a quick glimpse

00:05:13

at who we are, where we came from, and where we’re going. So let’s start things off at the

00:05:18

Appleton Museum in Ocala, Florida, where we spoke with Dr. Olson. So we’re here today at the Appleton

00:05:24

Museum of Art in Ocala, Florida

00:05:25

for the final day of the Mysteries of the Amazon exhibit.

00:05:29

On display are 95 paintings by Peruvian artist Pablo Amaringo and his students,

00:05:36

all from the private collection of Dr. Scott Olson.

00:05:39

Dr. Olson is here with us now. Thank you for being with us.

00:05:41

My pleasure, and thank you for recording this. And of the 95

00:05:46

paintings I should say 10 are Pablo Amarillo originals and 85 are his students who are now

00:05:55

growing up and I buy their paintings. But it’s probably about half of my collection.

00:06:02

Well they’re absolutely astounding. So the first question I had was,

00:06:06

how did you acquire this incredibly unique personal collection?

00:06:09

Well, in 2001, on the way into the Amazon rainforest

00:06:13

to work with a group of mestizo shamans,

00:06:17

I was introduced to Pablo Almeringo.

00:06:20

Let’s see, that was 2001.

00:06:22

Bought my first painting then.

00:06:27

of, let’s see, that was 2001, bought my first painting then. And I’ve been back another, what,

00:06:35

five times into the rainforest, twice up into the mountains, the highlands. But each time I would stop, visit with Pablo, buy more paintings. And then I realized he had all these students from

00:06:41

the Usko Iyer School that he he’d started and so I started collecting

00:06:46

their paintings so every time Olson came

00:06:48

to Bukalpa, the word got out

00:06:50

they’d line the streets with their paintings

00:06:52

and I kept buying and buying

00:06:54

because I fell in love with them.

00:06:56

They’re beautiful. What first

00:06:58

attracted you to Amazonian shamanism

00:07:00

and to ayahuasca?

00:07:01

Well, I’m really a student of the ancient

00:07:04

wisdom and have worked with

00:07:07

entheogens, psychotropics, all the way back into my college days and had studied the Eleusinian

00:07:15

mysteries in particular. And it dawned on me as I was reading and studying the subject

00:07:20

that this was really the rebirth in modern culture of the El Eusinian Mysteries,

00:07:26

which also, it was a nine-day event, drinking the Kaikian, much like the Odinic Mysteries.

00:07:35

Odin hangs upside down on the grazel after ingesting probably Amanita Muscaria, discovers

00:07:41

the mathematics of nature in the runes.

00:07:46

And I had also become, through the ancient wisdom,

00:07:49

extremely interested in the mathematical keys of nature,

00:07:52

particularly the golden ratio.

00:07:55

And I realized in my study of near-death experiences,

00:07:58

parallel things were happening with some of the ayahuasca experiences

00:08:02

where you gain access.

00:08:06

And the mystery schools, too, by the way.

00:08:10

Madame Blavatsky makes it clear that these geometric keys were given out in the ancient mystery schools, which were also ingesting sacred substances.

00:08:16

So I was quickly drawn to the ayahuasca experience,

00:08:20

and I wasn’t let down, and I can tell you more about that,

00:08:24

but I had incredible visionary

00:08:25

experiences. So you spoke earlier of the Usko IR, am I saying that right? Yes, Usko IR, Amazonian

00:08:35

School of Painting. Could you give us a little more background on that? Sure, absolutely. That was

00:08:40

founded by Pablo Amarengo along with Luis Eduardo Luna. And it was really Luna’s idea to

00:08:49

get this going because he had discovered Pablo and his work. And Pablo has had such a big heart

00:08:56

and loved the children. There are many disadvantaged children. So they decided they would give out the paints, the brushes, the paper and canvases,

00:09:09

and teach the kids how to respect nature, how to mimic it, how to draw it, and paint it very carefully.

00:09:17

And then in many cases, as time went on, they also had their ayahuasca experiences.

00:09:22

Not all of them, which is interesting, because Pablo then did later.

00:09:26

He stopped doing the ayahuasca and did his paintings from memory.

00:09:31

But he also taught them how to be good people,

00:09:34

how to play musical instruments, speak English,

00:09:38

so they become more international in their approach.

00:09:42

And so these kids were really trained rounded off into really good

00:09:47

character building people. And what kind of effects has the school had on Pakalpa and the

00:09:54

people that live there? Oh well it’s Pakalpa of course is kind of a hotbed little community in that area. But Pablo Amaringo’s presence there and then all of the artwork

00:10:08

has drawn many, many peoples into the region. And then, of course, people who are then going to go

00:10:13

further into experiences in the rainforest, that’s kind of a stopping spot. So anytime I would come

00:10:20

into Peru, I’d fly into Lima, then over the mountains into Paculpa, and then we’d take the journey out to the Ukiyeli River

00:10:27

and then go up into the headwaters of the Amazonian system.

00:10:31

But many people do that and come to visit this UISCO-IR school, which continues today.

00:10:38

I’ve noticed, you know, as we looked at some of these paintings,

00:10:40

that there’s this kind of commonality in the imagery.

00:10:43

And I imagine part of that is because they’re all going to the same school

00:10:46

and being taught in a similar method.

00:10:48

But also, if it’s being pulled from these visionary states,

00:10:53

what do you think causes this commonality in the visions?

00:10:56

Well, one of the things in particular that’s quite common and is universal,

00:11:01

not just in these paintings, is the presence of various animals and plants that are actually universal worldwide.

00:11:10

I’ll give you an example.

00:11:11

One in particular is the large cat.

00:11:14

And when you go through the exhibit, you’ll see a little panel out there about big cats

00:11:18

because I’ve seen them in Africa with the shamans who wear the pelts on King Tut’s tomb.

00:11:26

seen them in Africa with the shamans who wear the pelts on King Tut’s tomb. There’s an image of one of the priests wearing the pelt. Dionysus rides on the back of a leopard. Huichol Indians, when they

00:11:32

have their peyote experiences, come out and do these beautiful sacred geometric constructions

00:11:39

with beads on the jaguar heads. But again, it’s basically a universal.

00:11:47

And I’ve come to the conclusion,

00:11:50

because I have had real direct experiences with the jaguars.

00:11:55

That’s kind of my favorite.

00:11:57

They’re the top of the food chain.

00:11:59

And as a result, all the consciousness of all other plants and animals,

00:12:03

and here’s your representative of the rainforest

00:12:05

and I tell

00:12:08

you just flat out the big thing that

00:12:10

I experienced is the rainforest

00:12:11

and animals

00:12:13

and the abuse that humans

00:12:15

pour upon them and even

00:12:17

in our scientific method it’s nasty

00:12:20

it’s terrible

00:12:20

the plants and the animals

00:12:24

those medicines, those spirits,

00:12:26

they’re fully aware of our attitude and the way we treat them.

00:12:30

And therefore, with the shamanic approach and the indigenous cultures,

00:12:34

that kind of gentle reciprocity, respect and treatment,

00:12:40

participant observation as we do in these ayahuasca experiences,

00:12:43

as you’re now getting deeply into, Kat,

00:12:46

it’s a way that the plants and the animals will respond.

00:12:52

They teach us.

00:12:53

And now the people who are working on the genome and DNA

00:12:56

and all the most advanced stuff and in botany and in chemistry and in physics,

00:13:02

they’re going into the rainforest to learn from the plant teachers.

00:13:06

Like Jeremy Narby.

00:13:07

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with him.

00:13:08

Jeremy Narby’s book,

00:13:09

The Cosmic Serpent and the DNA Molecule,

00:13:12

I rank as the best book of the 20th century.

00:13:16

And I’ve given it to all my teachers

00:13:18

from all different fields within the ancient wisdom

00:13:21

and high energy physics, etc.

00:13:25

Houston Smith, all the others before he passed.

00:13:28

And there is a chapter in there,

00:13:32

Biology’s Blind Spot.

00:13:34

That’s another big thing

00:13:36

about what’s really going on in nature

00:13:38

with intention and purpose

00:13:41

and something bigger is going on

00:13:44

and we’ve been missing that.

00:13:45

So yes, Jeremy Narby, tremendous.

00:13:51

Height, top of the class.

00:13:53

So I know you have an interest in the field of sacred geometry.

00:13:57

Could you talk about the connection between sacred geometry and the visionary aspect of the ayahuasca experience?

00:14:02

Certainly, certainly.

00:14:02

and the visionary aspect of the ayahuasca experience?

00:14:03

Certainly, certainly.

00:14:09

One of the things that I had found was that people in near-death experiences,

00:14:13

when they come up, well, sometimes up a tunnel,

00:14:17

but when they have the life review and time stops and they move into a kind of a non-local space is no limitation,

00:14:22

time is no limitation.

00:14:23

space is no limitation, time is no limitation.

00:14:31

But in some cases, the mysteries of the patterns of nature are revealed.

00:14:38

And I, early on as a platonic, I guess, student of Plato, let’s call it that,

00:14:40

in Pythagoras, in this ancient wisdom, I began to realize that there was a key to nature hidden, but also very evident,

00:14:50

in what’s called the golden section, golden ratio, golden mean, which then gets translated

00:14:55

into Fibonacci numbers and then into what are called Lucas numbers. And we find it in the

00:15:00

microtubules, the DNA. When you look at the phalanges of the finger, you realize they’re all in golden ratio.

00:15:08

Everything in nature is resonating to this.

00:15:11

And what I found was that everything being vibratory, everything being resonant, you attune.

00:15:19

We’re hardwired for spiritual experience.

00:15:22

And it’s both within and so all of it is without.

00:15:27

When I would work on the brow center

00:15:30

and work particularly towards getting synesthetic experiences,

00:15:35

I would use a pine cone.

00:15:37

I’d flip it upside down and look at the patterns

00:15:39

because those are all Fibonacci spirals integrating,

00:15:43

or a head of a sunflower.

00:15:45

That would be another typical one.

00:15:47

And then I started to realize, oh, my God, it’s everywhere in nature.

00:15:52

And then I had, in 2005, a major epiphany,

00:15:56

where I can’t just say I was out of my body.

00:15:58

I was both out and in and connected to the cosmos, to nature, to the plant kingdom.

00:16:04

And I’d studied this for 40 years, but

00:16:07

suddenly the confidence that I gained because I saw how in fact it was in reality the logos

00:16:14

behind all existence. And that epiphany was so tremendous that I was awake for 19 days. I could

00:16:23

not sleep a wink, Actually, 23 days,

00:16:25

but I slipped out of consciousness

00:16:27

for about an hour twice during that time.

00:16:30

But 19 days without a wink of sleep.

00:16:34

And it was so exhilarating.

00:16:36

And within six months,

00:16:38

I had written the golden section,

00:16:40

Nature’s Greatest Secret,

00:16:42

which is now in nine languages.

00:16:44

It is an international bestseller

00:16:46

and again every time i go into the rainforest i’m working with and seeing those patterns

00:16:55

and then of course they’re reflected in the uh the uh the artwork itself especially the

00:17:02

synesthetic experiences that result with the intense colors.

00:17:06

Because again, everything is vibratory.

00:17:09

And so instead of just the occipital and different parts of the brain picking up, you go into synesthesia.

00:17:16

And to me, that arc work is an example of synesthetic experience.

00:17:23

You talked about how you had this epiphany while you were in that kind of state.

00:17:28

And I’ve heard of lots of other people talking about how they’ve also reached their own kind

00:17:32

of epiphanies, whether it’s scientific or whether it’s something that’s almost therapeutic

00:17:36

in nature.

00:17:37

It seems like Western civilization could certainly use a dose of that right now.

00:17:41

But how can we benefit from the knowledge of ayahuasca

00:17:46

without really kind of culturally appropriating it and taking away and not giving back to the Amazon?

00:17:52

Yes, that’s a really excellent question. One of the things that happened to me

00:17:56

was I was taken through an extremely painful experience, and you’ll see it on a text panel in the North Bay on the wall in the middle

00:18:08

in the back there and after the experience of the pain and suffering of the animal kingdom in

00:18:14

particular and humanity and how we just mistreat one another and all this crazy nationalism,

00:18:30

crazy nationalism, patriotism, ego, ego building, megalomania, belligerence, but abuse of the animals. And so they kind of threw me a bone. I say they, because there were beings that were

00:18:36

kind of guiding me in the process, not just Mamacita. It was even broader. And so they

00:18:43

threw me the bone. And the bone was, okay, we’ll give you some insight into the future Buddha,

00:18:49

Christ, whatever, Buddha consciousness, Kalki, Maitreya Buddha,

00:18:54

whatever it might be, I’m in Mahdi,

00:18:56

that the future world teacher, universal,

00:19:00

is going to go beyond what we’ve got now.

00:19:02

And they said, okay, there’s three things, and we’ll give them to you.

00:19:06

First was, we’ve got to practice the golden and silver rule.

00:19:10

It’s in every religion, but do they practice it?

00:19:12

It’s got to be both.

00:19:13

You do good things, you don’t do bad things.

00:19:15

You do unto others what you’d want them to do unto you,

00:19:18

and you don’t do unto others

00:19:19

what you wouldn’t want them to do unto you.

00:19:21

And every single religion has at least one or the other.

00:19:23

You’ve got to have both.

00:19:31

But the key was, they told me, that the you has to be your atman or higher self not your groveling little egotistical nonsensical self secondly ahimsa non-violence towards all living things

00:19:39

period now that’s a tough one for many um but many tribes they still they’re not vegetarian necessarily

00:19:47

but there’s a way to not mistreat animals certainly killing animals for trophies and

00:19:54

torture and abuse and there’s something we’ve got to move towards this ahimsa non-violence

00:20:01

towards all living things because i was then shown the vision that that is what leads to terrorism once you’re willing to treat animals as if they don’t have a feeling

00:20:10

see the future regret the past which we’re now learning and they’re much more intelligent

00:20:16

and their experiences their epistemology their way of knowing is in many ways advanced to ours

00:20:24

and that’s one of the things of course that I’ve learned with the ayahuasca experiences

00:20:28

is the supersensory enhanced perceptional states that the animals have

00:20:35

in a way of attuning and the synesthetic experience.

00:20:39

The third thing that’s toughest, my students have a difficulty with this,

00:20:43

consider the other first. But you

00:20:47

have to be reasonable with that because you can’t just be taken advantage of. But if everybody

00:20:54

did that, we would in fact be in the Garden of Eden. It would be heaven on earth. Jesus

00:21:01

in the Gospel of Thomas is an example expressed it the kingdom of heaven is spread upon earth

00:21:06

but man does not see it

00:21:07

it’s there but the other vision

00:21:11

I got which ties up with this

00:21:12

I won’t get political but I will say

00:21:15

this

00:21:15

I saw the vision of Nero burning

00:21:19

Rome and fiddling

00:21:21

away and now we have

00:21:22

when we elect dictators

00:21:24

megalomaniacs people who work with

00:21:27

the russian mafia and launder money and do all these bad and destroy the environment

00:21:32

and we allow this to happen we turn turn our face the other way we allow the destruction of our

00:21:39

culture we fail the world and people need to be begin to speak out about it and that’s what we can return

00:21:47

to the rainforest is a respect and being very careful who we put into power so we don’t keep

00:21:55

destroying the world. One of the things that I found that again with the ayahuasca experience

00:22:01

that’s similar to near-death experiences,

00:22:08

is you begin to realize there’s intention and purpose.

00:22:12

Now, I’m not saying it’s a cookie-cutter like, okay, here it is.

00:22:15

But as you know, many near-death experiencers, they get very frustrated because they realize they’re off course

00:22:18

from the intention of a life,

00:22:20

and they change ways through a transformation, through an epiphany.

00:22:23

I found the same thing happens with people with the ayahuasca.

00:22:28

And, of course, I had a perinatal experience near the time of birth,

00:22:33

which kind of set me on a path.

00:22:35

And I must tell you, writing my Golden Section book and its success

00:22:41

and doing this show, Mysteries of the Amazon, Visionary Paintings of Pablo

00:22:48

Amarillo and his students, is part of the fulfillment of my purpose in life. And so

00:22:54

thank heavens for ayahuasca. But it’s not for everybody. That’s probably the thing I should end

00:22:59

with is, you know, it’s not an easy path. If it’s done right, I find it to be extremely painful.

00:23:08

You must face yourself.

00:23:09

You must deal with that.

00:23:11

It’s like Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey,

00:23:13

and most myths are a descent into the underworld,

00:23:17

and you’ve got to face yourself and overcome the lower self,

00:23:22

find the Philosopher’s Stone, the Pearl of Great Price, the Holy Grail,

00:23:27

and then you do ascend up through Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces,

00:23:32

and you come to Aries, and you come to the Spring Equinox.

00:23:37

All of that stuff is integrated into the ayahuasca experience,

00:23:40

but most people don’t realize it.

00:23:42

And so unless a person is really ready,

00:23:45

it’s all set in setting, as you know. Your mental intention, you’re set, and then the spiritual

00:23:51

surroundings, but you’ve got to be extremely careful. A lot of people, this is probably not

00:23:57

the right path for them. There are other approaches, because the dimethyltryptamine is a natural

00:24:03

product of the human body and there’s

00:24:05

endogenous DMT as you know with someone like Bruce Dahmer and I learned that when I was a

00:24:11

bodybuilder years ago by going through the pain barrier there are ways to use pranayama, rhythmic

00:24:16

breathing, Wim Hof, all these different approaches can lead to the same goal. However

00:24:26

ayahuasca is a pretty

00:24:27

rapid approach if you’re

00:24:30

prepared.

00:24:33

Hopefully

00:24:34

you’re prepared. You’re going back in two

00:24:36

weeks. I think so.

00:24:38

It’s an honor to meet you

00:24:40

and to know that you’re following

00:24:41

that path. I’m so happy for you.

00:24:44

And thank you for sharing these paintings with all of us, too.

00:24:47

I mean, we know that tons of people have passed through this exhibit,

00:24:50

and it’s been just a lovely thing that you’ve done.

00:24:52

My pleasure.

00:24:54

And then for you folks later this afternoon, 2.30, if you want to be here.

00:24:59

Yeah, of course, definitely.

00:24:59

We will be there.

00:25:03

So this next segment is from a talk that we had with our 70-year-old father

00:25:06

about his experience with psilocybin mushrooms.

00:25:10

Enjoy.

00:25:13

All right, we’re here in central Florida with Mom and Dad.

00:25:17

We’re here visiting them before Kat heads off to Peru

00:25:20

and kind of have a week together as a family before we all part ways.

00:25:25

Other than Mom and Dad, who are stuck in Central Florida.

00:25:27

Sorry, guys.

00:25:30

Anyhow, Kat and I are very fortunate in the fact that our parents are fellow psychonauts

00:25:37

to some degree.

00:25:39

Perhaps haven’t delved as deeply into it as we have or as frequently, but nonetheless, they’ve each had their own profound psychedelic experiences,

00:25:49

and that’s kind of what we wanted to talk to them about today.

00:25:54

Could you talk a little bit about your experience with psilocybin mushrooms?

00:26:02

What interested you in them in the first place?

00:26:08

I don’t know. I’m not really the drug generation.

00:26:13

I’m older than that, so I started off just mainly drinking.

00:26:17

I don’t think I even used pot to an extent until the mid-70s or someplace in that era.

00:26:26

But mushrooms and acid and all that stuff were interesting to me.

00:26:29

I’m an artist by profession, a cartoonist,

00:26:36

and in my line of work, anything that alters reality a little bit is interesting to me anyway.

00:26:44

So I’ve always had kind of an interest in it,

00:26:47

but I didn’t know anybody that, I mean, I’m not one of those people

00:26:51

who just goes out and finds mushrooms somewhere and eats them, you know,

00:26:54

just on faith or something.

00:26:57

So, no, my delinquent daughters introduced me to them.

00:27:05

About ten years ago, right?

00:27:08

Yeah, it all blends together, but yeah.

00:27:11

Yeah.

00:27:12

Well, and you guys were kind of hesitant to experiment with them.

00:27:16

I mean, for you being your first exposure to it,

00:27:20

I mean, Mom, you had done psychedelics back in the 70s,

00:27:24

but you hadn’t actually done mushrooms back then, just LSD.

00:27:30

No, I’d done other things, just not mushrooms.

00:27:33

I mean, as far as psychedelics are concerned.

00:27:36

And I’d had some bad experiences in my childhood,

00:27:40

or later after my childhood,

00:27:43

but I thought if I got into that sort of thing,

00:27:47

I might have an experience that just brought that back in big doses,

00:27:54

and I didn’t want that.

00:27:55

I don’t want to relive that particular era of my life.

00:27:59

Do you think that that was because the media portrayed

00:28:03

and movies portrayed bad trips,

00:28:06

because they were trying to push their agenda

00:28:09

kind of against the side of…

00:28:10

Well, yeah, I mean, my entire education

00:28:11

is based on movies I’ve seen.

00:28:14

So if you see enough movies in television,

00:28:17

you eventually can link it all together

00:28:19

into this tremendous source of knowledge.

00:28:21

What did you, you know, before you ate mushrooms, what did you think

00:28:25

it was going to be, like Pink Elephants on Parade kind of a thing, or? No, that’s more or less how

00:28:30

I see everything now, but no, I’m not sure what I thought it was going to be. Again, I am influenced

00:28:38

by movies, so I saw it as a Peter Fonda, the trip kind of thing, where, but every time anybody tries

00:28:44

visually to show hallucinogenics,

00:28:46

they can’t really do it justice

00:28:48

yet because they don’t really have the technology

00:28:50

to do it, I don’t think.

00:28:51

It’s not technologically possible

00:28:53

yet.

00:28:55

No, I guess not. I don’t know.

00:28:57

I think we’re getting closer to that.

00:28:59

There’s a lot of people who are trying to

00:29:02

create 360 VR

00:29:04

environments that are as close to the psychedelic realm as they can get. of people who are trying to create 360 VR environments

00:29:05

that are as close to the psychedelic realm as they can get.

00:29:08

But even then, it’s like a cave painting compared to what you really experience.

00:29:12

So you’re a cartoonist and a writer.

00:29:15

Explain or describe as best you can to us, if you will,

00:29:20

what was it like when it first started kicking in?

00:29:23

How did you notice the effects coming on of the mushrooms? You went out to draw, right?

00:29:29

No, so I went out to my studio and I was sitting out there at the drawing board and I have

00:29:34

a yellow pad. Everything I’ve practically ever written is written on yellow pad and

00:29:37

longhand. And so I’ve got stacks of unused ideas and short stories that I started and didn’t finish.

00:29:46

But I thought I’d write a description of what the sensation was.

00:29:53

And I sat there for a long time, and I finally started to get bored with it.

00:29:57

And I was thinking of myself as Dr. Jekyll, you know, where I’ve taken the injection 20 minutes ago,

00:30:02

and now there’s no effect so far, you know.

00:30:04

And I’m writing stuff on the paper. well, I’ve taken the injection 20 minutes ago, and now there’s no effect so far.

00:30:11

And I’m writing stuff on the paper, and I start to notice that the letters,

00:30:17

certain letters, Fs in particular, are beginning to peel off the line and sag below it. And I’m thinking, well, that’s odd. That’s an odd thing.

00:30:21

And I was thinking, maybe I’m losing my, and I thought I could balance,

00:30:25

I can balance them perfectly on that line if I have to, and it’s starting to take effect,

00:30:29

and you see all the word effect fall away, because it gets two F’s in it,

00:30:33

and so I start to pay attention, and I look at my arm, my right arm, for the first time I saw it

00:30:41

as a mechanical device almost, like, but an organic one, where you could see all

00:30:46

the, all the

00:30:48

things inside of it, but not to the point

00:30:50

where it was scary, like the blob, where you

00:30:52

take your arm out, it’s

00:30:53

just meat. It was like

00:30:55

a functioning tool.

00:30:58

And whatever I was thinking was

00:31:00

coming down that arm, and

00:31:02

extending out into whatever creative thing

00:31:04

I was doing.

00:31:06

You mean you were sort of acting as a conduit?

00:31:08

That’s what it felt like, yeah.

00:31:09

Like I grabbed the conduit accidentally, and now I was part of the conduit, yeah.

00:31:14

So I thought, well, I’ll go in and talk to the girls about this.

00:31:17

This is interesting.

00:31:18

Once they see this transparent arm, they’re going to be really impressed.

00:31:22

And I got as far as the garage, I think, and there were stains on the

00:31:25

floor. And I started paying attention to them, first thinking, well, that’s funny. These stains

00:31:32

must be from the previous owner, because we don’t park our car this far over. That’s the beginning

00:31:36

of the thought process. And then the stains sort of moved underneath the concrete a little bit,

00:31:43

almost like a snake, just a big, but a big snake,

00:31:46

you know, big enough that you’re close enough to the texture that you don’t see it as a snake quite

00:31:50

yet. It’s just moving. And then I looked down and I could see multiple levels below. And,

00:31:58

and I didn’t look up because if there were multiple levels up, that would have really

00:32:02

freaked me out. But multiple levels below was bad. It was like a glass floor with lots of other, lots of smaller moving stuff below it.

00:32:10

Forever infinity, as far as my eyesight could determine.

00:32:14

And I thought, probably not a good thing to stand here,

00:32:17

because I think this is what it really looks like.

00:32:19

I think the concrete’s the illusion part.

00:32:21

I think this is what it’s really like.

00:32:23

You’re standing on an imaginary plane in some sort of big game.

00:32:30

So I wandered into the other room, couldn’t find anybody in the house, including the dog.

00:32:36

And I just stood there at the back door and looked out at the leaves and all the stuff,

00:32:41

and then everything looked alive to me, and everything was talking in its own way and i thought that’s really cool and uh anyhow well a couple of revelations and

00:32:54

then it wore off did you have any you said that one of the things that you were concerned about

00:33:00

was some sort of you know negative flashbacks and stuff like that did it have any sort of uh of negative effects or did it have any therapeutic effects or just mostly kind of a fun visual thing?

00:33:10

I don’t really know much about therapy. I’ve talked to a couple of people over the years

00:33:14

and I don’t think they know any more about it than I do. And they were supposed to be trained

00:33:19

people. So I have a lot of guilt about things that happened in my family

00:33:25

that if I had done this or that differently, it might have changed the outcome.

00:33:29

And anybody that has tragedy in their family probably feels that way.

00:33:33

You know, the things you should have said the last time you saw somebody

00:33:35

or what you could have done that would have changed this incident

00:33:38

or if you’d only left a half hour later or all those alternative things.

00:33:43

And so I felt a great deal of guilt and one of the

00:33:47

things that the mushrooms passed along to me when i say the mushrooms i’m not picturing it as god i’m

00:33:54

thinking of it as a bunch of little pink capped elf type things that are all talking in unison

00:34:00

like little ducks but anyway what it passed along to me was that guilt doesn’t do me any good.

00:34:07

There’s no reason to carry any guilt.

00:34:09

That it’s a completely worthless, those things are done,

00:34:13

those things are gone, you know, just like the floor in the garage.

00:34:19

So, anyhow, a little big revelation.

00:34:22

I mean, that died.

00:34:22

Let it go.

00:34:23

Yeah, pretty much.

00:34:24

There’s no reason to carry the guilt.

00:34:26

I’m adopted, so I may be Jewish on one side

00:34:29

because I can’t give up all the guilt.

00:34:31

It’s part of what motivates me.

00:34:33

But I’ve given up a lot of it.

00:34:36

Are you any happier now than before?

00:34:38

I don’t know. I’m getting older, so it balances itself out.

00:34:43

Would you do them again?

00:34:45

Yeah.

00:34:47

Provided I trusted the people I got them from.

00:34:50

You know?

00:34:51

And not just because my wife happened to talk to somebody

00:34:54

who knew somebody who happened to know somebody.

00:34:56

Or find them riding their quad.

00:34:58

Yeah, or happened to be riding their quad at a contest.

00:35:01

No.

00:35:03

And he found these stuck between the wheels

00:35:05

and said, hey, aren’t these?

00:35:07

No.

00:35:08

Under reasonably…

00:35:12

Controlled conditions.

00:35:13

Controlled conditions, yeah.

00:35:17

So this last segment is from a conversation

00:35:19

about psychedelics that we had with our mom

00:35:21

while we were on a road trip to Sarasota, Florida.

00:35:24

Enjoy.

00:35:28

With LSD, I was almost looking into a kaleidoscope of myself, where I was spiraling inward and inward

00:35:34

and inward and inward, further and further into my own psyche, to the point where I, at one point,

00:35:39

completely understood what it was like to be dad. And it was an odd feeling. We were sitting, it was Megan and

00:35:45

Kat and I all sitting there coloring our mandala coloring book, tripping balls. And at this point,

00:35:51

I thought we were coming down, you know, we’ve been doing it for hours and hours. And suddenly

00:35:56

this like, it washed over me, this feeling of, I can’t even explain it. It was, it was complete

00:36:03

empathy. I could suddenly understand what it was like to be someone who I’m constantly arguing with.

00:36:10

You know, I mean, especially back then, Dad and I were always arguing.

00:36:12

So to be able to go into that perspective and to understand him and to love him

00:36:18

because I suddenly understood exactly what he has gone through in his life was really, really powerful.

00:36:24

And I think that that’s one of the best things that psychedelics has to offer Western civilization

00:36:28

is that we are so involved in our own experience, especially with social media, where it’s like,

00:36:36

look what I ate for lunch today.

00:36:38

You know, cool.

00:36:39

That’s, that’s great.

00:36:40

But ultimately, cat threw me off, Jesus.

00:36:43

But ultimately, cat threw me off, Jesus.

00:36:51

Ultimately, what it’s really about is trying to find a way to relate to the other.

00:36:54

Not just finding the others, but finding a way to relate to everybody.

00:37:02

Because I guarantee you that as much as we are unhappy about the present political state,

00:37:05

that if we suddenly knew exactly what it felt like to be Donald Trump,

00:37:11

that we could even feel empathy for him. I mean, I think that that’s what we need to focus on is instead of there being all of this, you know, passing blame and anger towards one another,

00:37:17

even especially towards us who, someone you don’t agree with, to be able to empathize and to relate

00:37:23

to somebody, even though they’re the polar opposite

00:37:25

of you, is going to be how we heal this divide. Well, and it’s all about stepping outside of your

00:37:30

own ego. But you know, you can see outside of that, you can see what it would be like to be,

00:37:33

you know, your dad or your sister or the president or a dog or a cat or, you know, anyone. You can

00:37:41

put your consciousness into the perspective of anyone else and that’s the root

00:37:46

of empathy and humans have the capacity

00:37:48

to do that in our day to day lives

00:37:49

imagining ourselves in other people’s shoes

00:37:52

but psychedelics kind of force you to do that

00:37:54

I mean I’ve been able to put my own perspective

00:37:56

into trees and even

00:37:58

inanimate objects. Things like Russian

00:38:00

nesting dolls where it’s just like

00:38:02

if there’s enough love and intention

00:38:04

inside an object even even if it’s just like if there’s enough love and intention inside an object even

00:38:06

even if it’s made of dead materials maybe everything’s alive well the last the last

00:38:13

time that i did mushrooms i felt that connection to whatever it is the entity or the old i call it

00:38:21

the old it is because i think it’s all of us. We’re all one thing,

00:38:25

basically. We’re all part of the universe. And the universe, here’s my theory. My theory is,

00:38:30

and I know you’re not going to use this in the podcast. My theory is that the universe is trying

00:38:36

to get to the point where all of its tiny little tendrils and pieces all over the universe are

00:38:43

aware.

00:38:46

And that’s what it’s working toward.

00:38:50

So whenever you do psychedelics, you become more aware.

00:38:52

So it’s a good thing.

00:38:54

And I’m sorry, I’m sort of rambling. But what I wanted to say was that I felt so connected to it and so good

00:39:01

that I walked to the back door of our house in Phoenix

00:39:04

and I was looking out and

00:39:07

just thinking to it in my head saying why can’t I always have this connection with you why can’t I

00:39:14

always feel this way and I looked outside and all of a sudden I saw awareness in every single thing

00:39:20

that was living out there everything not that they had faces but they practically did

00:39:25

even stuff that wasn’t alive yes right and yeah and it was all there and it said to me

00:39:30

because could do you think you could live your day-to-day life seeing things like this and i

00:39:35

said nope i don’t think so we wouldn’t be able i mean if we saw things the way that we do on

00:39:41

psychedelics we wouldn’t be able to do anything we wouldn’t be able to like make a meal for ourselves well have psychedelics shown you that we’re all the same

00:39:53

thing that we’re all pretty much the same not that we’re the same thing but that we’re all

00:39:57

connected we’re definitely not all the same i mean we are and are not i mean one of the things i learned from working on the human genome project was that we’re like 99.9 percent the same biologically and i’m not talking about you and

00:40:12

me because we’re family i’m saying 99 of my dna with someone across the planet that i’ve never

00:40:16

met before is the same but it’s that one percent or that i think it might be point it’s way less

00:40:21

one percent i think it’s night i think we’re 99 think. I think we’re 99.9%.

00:40:25

I think we’re 99% the same as chimps.

00:40:28

Right.

00:40:29

So I think it’s 99.9% related to each other.

00:40:31

And that 1%, that 0.1% is…

00:40:36

Responsible for every war on the planet.

00:40:39

Everything else, yeah.

00:40:39

I mean, it’s catalogs of information in that 0.1%

00:40:42

as far as what differentiates us between each other.

00:40:46

The way I’ve kind of come to see it is that we are all one in the spiritual domain.

00:40:54

I guess that’s what I mean.

00:40:55

You know, it’s controversial to talk about the spirit a little bit.

00:40:58

I mean, it shouldn’t be.

00:41:00

No, because there’s no science backing spirit.

00:41:02

Because there’s no scientists that’s like, I found it.

00:41:04

I found the spirit.

00:41:05

And they maybe never will.

00:41:07

But, you know, from my ayahuasca experiences and just all my psychedelic experiences,

00:41:12

there’s a spirit in all human beings.

00:41:17

And maybe in all beings.

00:41:18

Everything living has a spirit.

00:41:20

And that spirit is one.

00:41:22

So when we kill each other, it’s just like this absurd thing.

00:41:24

I know, it’s just like this absurd thing.

00:41:25

You see people doing the most horrific things and you think,

00:41:28

how?

00:41:28

I mean,

00:41:29

not even killing each other,

00:41:30

you know,

00:41:30

killing,

00:41:31

you know,

00:41:31

abusing animals,

00:41:32

for example,

00:41:33

it’s something that Scott Olson is going to talk about in our interview later on in this episode.

00:41:37

Um,

00:41:39

the way that we treat our animals,

00:41:42

and this is not some vegan thing. I’m’m not that’s not where i’m going with

00:41:46

this because i do eat meat but what i’m saying is that the way that we treat our animals by abusing

00:41:54

them or throwing them out of car windows or making them fight each other or making them jump through

00:41:59

hoops or factory farming or yeah any of these I mean, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be done.

00:42:10

You look at these indigenous cultures where they had respect for the animals they killed.

00:42:14

And they used every bit of them, which I guess we do that.

00:42:17

I mean, in some sense, we use as much as we can.

00:42:19

But that’s not because we respect them.

00:42:23

It’s because we don’t want to lose money on that process, know and we’re well we can turn this into hot dogs

00:42:25

whatever yeah but it’s cat food or yeah exactly or cat or dog food but it’s making everyone sick

00:42:32

it’s making everyone sick because it’s not we’re not doing this with any sort of respect for um

00:42:39

for the life that we took no you’re right, here’s something that I would like to talk about.

00:42:48

In terms of LSD as opposed to plant-based hallucinogens,

00:42:53

do you feel like there’s an actual spirit in the plant?

00:42:59

Yes.

00:43:00

You do?

00:43:00

Yeah, of course.

00:43:01

And LSD is a chemical that was produced in a laboratory,

00:43:04

so maybe that’s why you don’t connect with the same kind of a spirit.

00:43:09

See, I felt there was a spirit in the LSD experience.

00:43:12

I just felt like it was my own spirit being reflected back at me.

00:43:16

Yeah, that’s what Alexa said, too.

00:43:19

Well, then mine’s pretty zany.

00:43:21

Yeah, mine, too.

00:43:23

But do you think that each plant has its own special spirit?

00:43:29

Right.

00:43:29

Yeah.

00:43:30

Maybe even each individual mushroom has its own spirit.

00:43:33

Who knows?

00:43:34

It might not be that every single, every time you eat mushrooms, you’re interacting with the same spirit.

00:43:39

It might be that, you know, depending on the batch or the particular, I mean, that’s why they say that when you are, if you are to grow these yourself, that you need to grow them with

00:43:50

intention because if you grow them and you’re like, I’m going to make so much money, I’m

00:43:54

going to make so much money, that’s not what it’s about.

00:43:58

And your mushrooms are not going to like that intention.

00:44:01

I believe that mushrooms are a sacrament.

00:44:06

Well, and the same intention is sort of required when people go harvest the plants to make ayahuasca, too.

00:44:14

You’re supposed to have that intention when you go into the forest to harvest the copy and the chacrino leaves.

00:44:21

I worry about that with everybody, with it becoming so popular, if they’re just going to denude the rainforests of these plants.

00:44:28

Well, I think these retreats, you know, it’d be interesting if, like, a lot of them start focusing on replanting Banisteriopsis copy, if that was, like, a big part of the retreats, too, you know, because, like, tons of people are going to them.

00:44:40

But if that was a part of it, it was like you go out into the woods and you plant a new…

00:44:43

You should.

00:44:44

Plant a new copy plant.

00:44:45

Because it’s like, we can’t, you know, we can’t let that go extinct.

00:44:49

No, that would be horrible.

00:44:50

Fucking horrible.

00:44:51

What about the ayahuasca vine?

00:44:52

You know, all the pictures that I see online and the ones that we’ve drawn,

00:44:56

they’re maybe five or six inches wide.

00:45:00

They take a long time to grow.

00:45:01

How long does it take for a vine like that to grow?

00:45:03

A really long time.

00:45:04

Probably too long. Fort 40 years, you know?

00:45:06

Yeah.

00:45:07

And then someone just cuts it down for…

00:45:09

Well, then we should grow it everywhere.

00:45:11

I mean, there’s no reason not to.

00:45:13

It’s not illegal.

00:45:14

It should be everywhere.

00:45:15

I’d grow it if I could.

00:45:17

I mean, we live in Florida.

00:45:20

Everything grows here.

00:45:50

Well, that’s our show, folks. Everything grows here. side of psychedelics. We hope you’ll join us again for what’s sure to be an interesting conversation. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or connections to people we might interview next, please email us at findtheothers42 at gmail.com. Signing off, I’m Alexa. And I’m Kat.

00:46:01

Onwards and upwards.